Monday Micro Softy 29: A Funeral Lament in Four Lines
The funeral director was puzzled by Dan’s description of his relationship to the deceased but there was no question that his grief was sincereThis week’s Micro Softy is about the cheery topic of funerals.
At an open casket ceremony at the funeral home, Dan went to look at the deceased. The embalmers had done a masterful job.
The funeral director approached. He had not yet met Dan.
“How do you know this man?” he asked quietly.
Dan inhaled and responded with a sad four-line poem:
Brothers and sisters
I have none.
But this man’s father
Is my father’s son.
The funeral director nodded knowingly even though he still didn’t have a clue as to the relationship. Do you?
The answer to the relationship is indicated in the poem — but not clearly. Think about it.
Solution to Micro Softy 28: Beating the odds of winning sweepstakes?
Here’s a summary of last week’s Micro Softy. Lenore, a sweepstakes hobbyist, was reading a book of advice on how to win by entering a number of times. To increase her chances of winning a sweepstake, she was advised to spread her numerous entries over the duration of the contest. They would then end up in multiple entry boxes, which get filled in order up to the deadline. Because the winning box is then chosen at random, distributing her entries across multiple boxes improves the likelihood that one of them will be in the selected box. In contrast, if all her entries were in a single box and that box is not chosen for the final draw, her chances of winning drop to zero.
Was this advice right, wrong, or somewhere in between?
Here’s the answer.
The advice is wrong Wrong WRONG!
If all your entries are in one box or spread out among all the other boxes, your chances of winning in a fair drawing are exactly the same no matter how many entries are in each box. The only requirement is that the final box be chosen randomly.
It’s even crazier than this. Suppose, as shown in Figure 1 below, the contents of boxes 5 and 14 have duplicated. Boxes 8 and 27 of entries are mistakenly thrown away before the drawing. Assuming this happened with no one knowing what was in the boxes, the chances of you winning remain the same in a fair drawing.
So go ahead. Mail all your sweepstakes entries at once. It will save trips to the post office and maybe reduce the cost of postage.
If interested, a deeper explanation of this result is in the book: R.J. Marks II, W.A. Dembski, W. Ewert, Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, (World Scientific, Singapore, 2017). link.
Links to all the Monday Micro Softies
Monday Micro Softy 28: Beating the odds of winning sweepstakes? Does it make a difference when the sweepstakes hobbyist sends in her entries? The solution to Monday Micro Softy 27 lies in appreciating the significance of Keith’s request for two bags instead of one.
can’t be copyrighted.
Monday Micro Softy 27: Diamond in the rough Why did the mathematician want all the diamond rings — hundreds of fake ones, plus a real one — divided into two bags? The solution to Micro Softy 26 lies in recognizing that there are different ways of measuring distance.
Monday Micro Softy 26: Arguing with Pythagoras. Will the diagonal of a triangle with sides of 3 and 4 feet be 5 feet or, as a visiting mathematician suggests, 7 feet? The answer to last week’s puzzle lies in remembering what happens when you put a rod on a diagonal inside a square box.
Monday Micro Softy 25: The Fishing Rod Blues The Memphis bus driver was sympathetic but he couldn’t let Johnny ride with his overlong fishing pole. Johnny solved the problem—but how? About last week’s Micro Softy: You CAN have a tie in 3D Tic Tac Toe. We illustrate it. And we show what the 4D game is like.
Image Credit: Diana - Monday Micro Softy 24: Have you ever tried 3D Tic Tac Toe? To liven up a predictable game, try doing it in three — or even four — dimensions! You won’t be bored. To solve the Barnum’s Circus ticket receipts puzzle, recall that X, Y and Z must all be whole numbers. Algebra then enables us to work out the solution.
Monday Micro Softy 23: Barnum’s Circus Receipts. Circus master Barnum’s ticket seller had not kept proper track of the tickets sold. Can the limited information — and some algebra — help Barnum figure it out? The solution to Micro Softy 22, given here, depends on the assumptions we make about Timmy’s surgeon.
and
Monday Micro Softy 22: Can there be two daddies? This week’s puzzler asks: Can a child’s father be dead and alive at the same time? Or is there another solution? The solution to last week’s puzzler lies in things we can do with binary numbers.
Earlier classic Micro Softies:
Monday Micro Softy 21 and previous links: Finding More of the Deadly Fentanyl Pills. There, you will also find links to Microsofties 11 through 20 as well.
At Monday Micro Softy 11: What Happened to That Other Dollar?, you will find links to the first ten Micro Softies. Have fun!
